Diwang Pinay 2011 “Motherhood, Sisterhood, Sustained” Press Release

For Immediate Release

April 23, 2011

Contact: Melissa Reyes, LFS-San Francisco State University lfs.sfsu@gmail.com

Ninth Annual Diwang Pinay to Highlight Importance of Sacred Bonds of Motherhood and Sisterhood

Themed “Motherhood, Sisterhood, Sustained,” the event will raise funds for exposure trips to the Philippines for the International Women’s Alliance First General Assembly and the International League of Peoples’ Struggle Conference. Funds will also be donated to various communities in the Philippines

San Francisco, CA— On Friday, April 29, 2011 Babae San Francisco-Gabriela USA, League of Filipino Students, and Kappa Psi Epsilon will host the 9th Annual Filipina Women’s Showcase, Diwang Pinay. With the recent attacks on women’s reproductive rights by House Republicans, the women of these organizations will come together in defense of our mothers and sisters. The House Republicans’ proposals in Congress would indefinitely slash funding for Planned Parenthood and services for women, such as abortions and family planning services. With Babae’s ongoing campaign to fight Violence Against Women, this campaign includes the State’s violent attacks on women’s most basic human rights. By highlighting motherhood, sisterhood and our collective reality, we hope to celebrate our triumphs in the face of oppressive power.

Diwang Pinay (Spirit of the Filipina) is an annual performance and silent auction showcasing Filipina/Filipina-American performers, writers and artists. This event serves as one of very few venues solely dedicated to providing pinays from the Bay Area and beyond a platform to proudly share and express their struggles and triumphs.

This year’s celebration is themed “Motherhood, Sisterhood, Sustained,” to highlight the importance of the sacred bonds of motherhood and sisterhood and how essential these bonds are in sustaining healthy communities. By strengthening our connections as mothers and sisters, our relationship with systems of oppression becomes less difficult to fight. When we reclaim our sacred bond and work toward interdependence in the defense of our communities, we are victorious in every battle against those that deem us unworthy of our basic rights, like the choice to control and determine the rights to our bodies, whether that be access to abortion or family planning and reproductive rights services.

This year’s Diwang Pinay hosts an array of performances from talented pinays from San Francisco and the greater Bay Area, with acts like spoken word artist and rapper Ruby Ibarra, singing and poetry by members of the Galing Bata Afterschool Program, and an in-progress teaser for Pinay Stories, a production by an entire Filipina cast. There will be an art gallery on display and a silent auction showcasing art work of different mediums by artists such as Dianne Que of Hurley Sashimi Handmade, Faye Lacanilao, Raisa Cuevas, Vee Caragay, and a live art session by Niki Escobar.

Join us on Friday, April 29, 2011, from 7 to 9 P.M. at the Cesar Chavez Student Center-Jack Adams Hall at San Francisco State University: 1600 Holloway Avenue, San Francisco, CA 94132. The suggested donation will be a sliding scale of $7-12, $5 for students ages 10-17 with a valid student ID, and free for children under the age of 10. For more information, visit Diwang Pinay’s official website at https://sites.google.com/site/sfdiwangpinay.

###

–
“The very time I thought I was lost, my dungeon shook and my chains fell off.”

Thank You Message from Melissa Roxas…

Dear Friends of Melissa Roxas,

We are sending this to you on behalf of Melissa Roxas because you either expressed concern over Melissa’s abduction and torture in the Philippines last month or she provided email addresses of her friends she wanted updated now that she is back in Los Angeles.  If you are hearing about Melissa’s ordeal for the first time, we provided links after her thank you message below.

Please feel free to share this email to those that know Melissa.

Sincerely,
Friends of Melissa Roxas
friendsofmelroxas@gmail.com

***

Dearest Friends,

The recent birth of my niece reminds me that life is something more than just presence, it is the earth rising inside of you, the earth that has been there since the beginning, but taking a different form.

I started to think about all the other babies I had seen as a community health worker in the Philippines before my niece was born. The marking of before and after, beginnings and endings. I remember their mothers taking them in for health screenings and basic check ups. Infants who went untreated for days with a fever, the softness in their eyes gives way to a hardness, their skin was tight from dehydration, they were so tiny, their hand in mine was as little as my thumbnail. I remember how much I wanted them to get better and be alive. With so many babies, children and families that I’ve met, I realized that the disease they had was more than an epidemic of typhoid fever, cholera, or malaria, it was the disease of poverty and oppression.

When I started to work more with particular issues of human rights violations I also met different babies, babies and children who had lost their mothers and fathers to a different death. A horrible and preventable death that takes the life not only of its victim, but robs the whole family and the world of their presence, all because they advocated and fought for a better world where their children have genuine freedom, a just peace, and true democracy.

Philippines: Revolutionary Option

Story Location: http://www.bworldonline.com/BW062609/content.php?id=143

Philippines: Revolutionary option

“Whether one sympathizes with it or not, the fact is that this revolutionary movement is present and exerts significant political influence. It continues to challenge the ruling system and regime in power at every turn and raises the possibility of overturning the crisis-ridden system one day and introducing a radically different alternative…”

June 26, 2009 | MANILA, PHILIPPINES
BusinessWorld Online – Quezon City,Philippines

By Carol Pagaduan-Araullo

AFP Chief Gen. Victor Ibrado recently admitted that the military is having difficulty meeting the deadline imposed by de facto Commander-in-chief Gloria Arroyo three years ago, to end the decades-old communist insurgency in 2010. (Philippine Star, June 22, 2009). This was after he and his predecessors had repeatedly boasted that the military was on track in achieving the defeat of the New People’s Army (NPA).

The lame excuse is that the armed guerrillas “are just crisscrossing borders and transferring to another guerrilla front” even when the AFP had already allegedly “dismantled” the political and military infrastructure of numerous rebel fronts.

One need not be an expert on military strategy and tactics to know that guerrillas by nature employ flexibility and shifting tactics. This is a guerrilla movement’s way of dealing with the overwhelming superiority, in terms of numbers and weapons, of the state’s armed forces. Instead, it uses the favorable physical and social terrain in the countryside — i.e., the rugged mountains and remaining forested areas as well as the support of the rural populace — to conduct its revolutionary warfare.

Time and again ruling regimes announce the impending demise of armed revolutionary movements in much the same vein and for the same reasons that they belittle the democratic protest movement. The aim is to conjure strength and stability, to foist the illusion of popular acceptance if not support, because government is supposedly undertaking reforms that address the causes of armed conflict and mass protest actions.

Deceptive propaganda works up to a certain point, given government resources and numerous levers to manipulate, if not control, the mass media. But reality always catches up and the truth becomes so glaring that the regime’s minions are compelled to eat their words and offer the lamest of excuses or persist in the most egregious of lies.

Melissa Roxas Tells Her Story of Abduction and Torture

This past Saturday a press conference was held in Los Angeles, CA to address the recent abduction of Melissa Roxas, a member of Habi Arts- LA & BAYAN-USA, by the Armed Forces of the Philippines (AFP). For the first time, Melissa was able to speak out in public to what had happened to her and take questions from the media. While the Philippine Government and AFP are doing their best to deny these events took place, even going as far as to claim that the kidnapping was staged, they cannot deny the real human emotion that Melissa displayed during the press conference. The physical and psychological scars that she carries with her serves as testimony against the Philippine Government’s stance on basic human rights. Unfortunately, she is not alone. As long as the current administration’s policy is to demonize and attack organizers who are trying to serve the needs of the people, this will continue to happen. As long as the U.S. Government continues to give the AFP $30 million a year in aid, they will continue these atrocities. We must do what we can to 1) inform folks about what’s going 2) put pressure on our government to stop all military aid to the Philippines. Otherwise, Melissa won’t be the last victim of kidnapping and torture in the Philippines.

Day of Action: Junk the VFA, Justice for the Abducted

**Please forward widely**

DAY OF ACTION AGAINST THE VISITING FORCES AGREEMENT

10 years of the VFA = 10 years of military occupation, abductions, and rape

Wednesday, May 27, 2009

PROTEST and Meeting with the Philippine Consulate General

3:30pm

@ the Philippine Consulate [**note location change**]

447 Sutter Street, San Francisco

Teach-In on the VFA

6pm

@ SOMCAN

1070 Howard Street (c/s: 7^th Street)

San Francisco, CA
Both events featuring special guest speaker Senator Francis “Kiko” Pangilinan and representatives of BAYAN-USA, GABRIELA USA and NAFCON-Norcal

In the wake of the abduction of Filipino American human rights advocate and health worker Melissa Roxas and her companions Juanito Carabeo and John Edward Handoc, please join BAYAN-USA and GABRIELA USA as we condemn the US-Philippines Visiting Forces Agreement (VFA) and demand justice for victims of abduction and all human rights violations with an action and educational forum on the 10th anniversary of the VFA’s ratification.

The Only “Change” We See Is the Change Being Pocketed by the Philippine Government to Rape and Terrorize the Filipino People—BAYAN-USA

FOR MORE INFORMATION ON THE CASE GO TO: Another ‘Nicole’: Filipina Accuses US Marine of Rape; Case Heightens Junk-VFA Call – Bulatlat

(Fact Sheet on the case at the bottom of statement)

FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE
Contact: Rhonda Ramiro, secgen@bayanusa.org
May 14, 2009 www.bayanusa.org

Vanessa, her back to the cameras, narrates her plight during a press conference on Thursday. (Photo by Ayi Muallam/Bulatlat.com)

Gabriela’s Emmi de Jesus (left) and lawyer Evalyn Ursua both say Vanessa’s case strengthens the argument against the Visiting Forces Agreement. (Photo by Ayi Muallam/Bulatlat.com)

The Only “Change” We See Is the Change Being Pocketed by the Philippine Government to Rape and Terrorize the Filipino People—BAYAN-USA

Appalled by the double-news of the rape of another Filipina woman by a U.S. Marine and the increase in U.S. financial aid to the corrupt Philippine government, BAYAN-USA reiterated its call to terminate the U.S.-Philippines Visiting Forces Agreement (“VFA”), which the alliance of 14 Filipino American organizations in the U.S. sees as the red carpet used to usher in U.S. troops, supplies, and military training linked to thousands of human rights violations.

Under the auspices of the VFA, over 6,000 US troops were deployed to the Philippines this past April, to engage in so-called Balikatan (“shoulder-to-shoulder”) military exercises.  In a press conference today, the 22-year-old Filipina “Vanessa” (not her real name) told the story of how she was raped in a hotel room on April 19 by a U.S. Marine, registered in hotel records as “from Joint U.S. Military Assistance Group/Balikatan.”  According to the women’s group GABRIELA, Vanessa has decided not to file a case against her alleged rapist though there is evidence to support her claim.

“We are outraged that another Filipina has become the victim of U.S. troops, and that the VFA is blocking her from obtaining justice,” said BAYAN-USA Secretary General Rhonda Ramiro.  “Last month’s acquittal of convicted rapist Lance Corporal Daniel Smith signals that U.S. military personnel can get away with the most heinous crimes on Philippine soil because they will be protected by the VFA.”

LFS Music Break! “I Want You” by Caroline Calderon

First off, we would like to thank all of you who came and supported the 7th Annual Diwang Pinay! We were proud to support and showcase many of our community’s talented artists. It’s important that we help cultivate and provide a space for our artists to present their skills to the community, while educating ourselves on the important issues we face. With that said, for this music break, we’d like to show one of this weekend’s performers. Props to Caroline and the many talented folks who performed Sunday! Hopefully we’ll get to see you perform again soon! And support independent artists!!!